I HAVE always known that I am adopted. But I did not know until a few years ago that the Church of England had overseen my forced adoption. The Church has now published a report on historical adoption practices, particularly in mother-and-baby homes, and apologised for the “pain, trauma, and stigma experienced”.
I was born in 1975, at the end of the period 1949-1976 covered by the report. I had a happy childhood with my adoptive parents. As an adult, I started to ask questions, which my parents answered based on the limited information that they had been given. After the death of my adoptive mother in 2016, I resolved to find my birth mother. I had her name, knew that she was 18 when I was born, and, with the wonders of the internet, located her fairly quickly. She has become very much part of my life and family.
So far, so good. Less edifying was the truth about my adoption, which was not what my adoptive parents had been told. Through some painful conversations and correspondence kept for more than 40 years, I discovered that she had been coerced into consenting to my adoption. She was given no meaningful professional support in exploring her options.
Some nasty attitudes and manipulative practices emerged. The nurses in the maternity ward did not refer to her by name, but as “the pregnant schoolgirl”. I saw correspondence from the adoption agency expressing frustration at the delay, saying that a family was waiting to begin my life with them, and, unbelievably, sending her a bill for the ongoing costs of my foster care. But the real gut punch was that the adoption agency was run by a Church of England diocese. As a priest, I felt as if the foundations upon which my vocation and ministry were built had turned suddenly into sewage.
Canon Matthew Rushton today
I was not in one of the homes on which the report focuses, and, in fairness, my birth mother came from a well-to-do and educated family. She was at school, but was an adult. So, if her voice was not properly heard, how on earth could young mothers in more precarious circumstances receive appropriate advice and support? The answer is that they did not — the Church knew best. Or, as the report vacillatingly puts it, the Church sat “within a wider system shaped by the social attitudes and laws of the time”.
The wrong-headed, patronising theology underpinning those attitudes needs further exploration and challenge. It is a long way from St Paul’s “spirit of adoption” or St John’s Gospel’s “power to become children of God”. The myth sold to my adoptive parents — of a teenager who continued bravely with the accidental pregnancy to give me a better life — has uncomfortable resonances with patriarchal portrayals of Mary as meek, mild, stoical, obedient. I have no doubt that some of these attitudes still exist today.
THERE have been many expressions of sorrow from the Church of England recently, seeking to atone for abuse, racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism, etc. This is the first time that I have had the lived experience to be at the receiving end of such an apology, and I have found this illuminating and destabilising.
I guess that the apology is not really directed to me, but to mothers in the homes mentioned in the report — although the guilt of the Church clearly extends throughout adoption practices in that period. The damage caused to me is probably more amorphous than obvious mental and physical scars. Also, I had loving parents and was eventually reunited with my birth mother. Not all adoption stories are so. Yet, particular people have suffered through the actions of a diocesan adoption agency (now disbanded) more than 50 years ago: a young woman coerced into making a difficult decision, an adopting couple lied to, and a baby who, on some level, is still waiting for his mother to come back and collect him.
I find myself wondering: what is the point of an apology? There has been criticism that it lacks specific admission of wrongdoing by the Church. We are told that “listening to people directly affected has been an important part of this work.” No one approached me, although they cannot talk to everyone, and records are sketchy. Those “affected by this news” are directed to various resources. I do not doubt the sincerity of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s message. But I cannot shake the feeling that this is an exercise in making the Church feel better about itself. There have been many “mea culpas”; church spokespersons are becoming very good at disfiguring their faces as they settle down to yet another fast of “deep regret” and “heartfelt despair”.
MY BIRTH mother, a special-educational-needs professional working with vulnerable children and young people, is critical of the apology offered and of being told how she should feel. She does not feel shame, but anger towards a Church that should have shown compassion, but instead colluded in her exclusion from decisions about her child. She would like to know what change the Archbishop has in mind, for example in theological understanding, or the Church’s engagement in social care and policy.
I can only speak for myself, but I think that victims and survivors of any safeguarding failure, including this one, want meaningful change, and that those responsible for abuse, mismanagement, and cover-up should face consequences. In my case, those responsible are long gone. But perhaps the appropriate response, rather than simply speaking gravely of lament and lessons learned, is for the Church to take action where accountability is still possible. Otherwise, it is merely adopting an apologetic stance, rather than actually being sorry.
Canon Matthew Rushton is Rector of Christ Church, Morningside, in Edinburgh. He has previously worked in the dioceses of Lincoln, Canterbury, and Rochester.